While all this human activity is taking place another more ancient transformation is also unfolding. The yearly cycles are moving along and winter is gone. The hardness of the cold weather is past. The sea is softening and creatures are moving into their spring routines. Horseshoe crabs are making an appearance as they have done since the time of the dinosaurs and perhaps even earlier. Shrimp are feeding heavily on minute creatures that they can see much better than me. Winter flounder are spawning in the salt rivers and so are the "White Chinner" tautog. The elvers are returning from the Sargasso and the Atlantic herring "glass minnow" fry are swarming in many of the salt ponds and harbors all along the coast. The alewives have returned to spawn in the little ponds that feed the brooks that empty in the salt. The big white shad are in their rivers. They come before the lilac bloom and when the lilacs bloom, those of us whose wait is over leave them to spawn in peace. The stripers are back. And everything is right on time, as it always is, each and every spring.

It's a special time for fly fishermen. If you have never fished the spring run then you have missed the sweetest part. It's a wonderful time to fish for stripers. The things you see can only be witnessed in the spring. The spawning shrimp and mummies, the horseshoe crabs bumping into your booted feet, the silversides and the clam worm hatch and stripers. Stripers everywhere. That's how I like to think about spring. Tidal rivers and creeks, small water, fish that are predictable in where they hold and feed. Good fishing, easy and hard, sometimes a stretch to catch even one and sometimes you leave exhausted from way too many fish caught and the next evening you return and do it all again. It's the way it is in spring.

For some the open ocean is where to go to find the stripers in the spring. The bass are moving and when they find an old familiar place on their journey east they pause and stay awhile. Long enough for us to find them. The cove at Watch Hill, Weekapaug, Quonny, Green Hill, Carpenters, and the West wall, the corners of the beaches in Newport, and all the saltponds that empty along the open coast. The rivermouths just inside, and outside sometimes. There are stripers in all the old familiar places and all the old familiar faces will be seen again and some will not and some will be remembered and some will not. There will be new faces to take their place and some new faces will stay a lifetime and pass it on. It all happens in the spring. Every year the same and every year just a little different.

The big fish are here now. The herring fishermen catch them each and every spring. There are gigantic squid feeding in the big saltponds near the open ocean. They come and hunt the glass minnows that gather there in spring and the old-timers knew this long ago and the stripers know it too. The big ones do. Squid flies drifted in the Westport River, Pleasant Bay and Great Salt Pond along the channel cuts and bars- something new to do that is old as old can be. Remember those who knew before you knew and passed it on without a claim. The big Boston mackerel are close to shore in May and the big stripers know this too. And there is so much more, so much more, and cow cove on Block Island has cows in May as it always has and not the bovine kind. And June is still to come.

The rivers are coming into their prime. The trollers are trolling. The live liners are live lining. The bridge fishermen are hanging their clamworms and all are catching stripers now. These are the good old days for someone. I stood on those bridges, trolled with the trollers, live-lined with the liveliners and I'm glad I did.
I never stood on a bridge with my dad but I trolled and live-lined with him and I fly fished with him too and those were good days and good nights and they are mine to savor and remember and I do remember. I can't forget. I don't know how to forget because those memories are alive inside of me every time I see a spring striper or a boy and his dad fishing. I just remembered a bridge that I did stand on with my dad when I was older and a married man. It was in the spring and we were live-lining herring and we caught some nice fish that night and a raccoon dragged one off the bridge and I chased him and got the fish back. My dad died in 1978 and I have thought about him every single day since then and I miss him. Spring fishing is the sweetest part of my remembering him.

Fly-fishing is so good in the rivers now. Every day more and more silversides are making their way upstream. Tiny half-inch long silverside fry from an earlier spawn are beginning to come down on the ebb tide. Two and one half inch long silversides are everywhere and the big five to six inch long silversides are beginning to show up in large enough numbers to mean something to the bass. The shrimp are beginning to spawn and are rising to the surface after dark. There are clamworm swarms from time to time and the bass are very busy feeding on a great variety of different and unique organisms. There are so many different entrée's on the menu for them to choose from that it can be a real challenge to figure out just what they want. Springtime fishing in the tidal rivers of New England has everything necessary to make fly fishing in salt water a very interesting game for anglers who want to broaden their awareness of what is possible for them to accomplish.

I was fortunate as a youngster to grow up next to a small tidal river. The things that I learned then are a valuable resource for me now. I can tell you how to learn those same things for yourself. That is easy. Go and get a small mesh dip-net with a long handle and bring it with you. That is the basic tool you will need to catch what the stripers are feeding upon. How much you learn lies totally within your own willingness to act. You can catch fish without knowing this information through trial and error or by using a leader with droppers, which is an accelerated method of finding out quickly what the fish will take, but these methods bypass the certainty achieved when you take samples yourself. There is an old saying that goes, "Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die". You can have faith in what everyone else tells you is best or you can find the answer yourself by deciding to cross over the divide between those who do and grow and those who won't. That choice is always there and nothing can stop your progress once the choice is made. I believe that taking action to learn accomplishes results quickly. Nature herself is the best teacher but she only reveals her secrets to those who participate in classroom activities. The dip-net is the fast track. Place it where the current will funnel the water through and be amazed by discovering how easy it is to find out exactly what it is that you always wanted to know.

There is a method for fishing in tidal rivers that will teach you more in a short space of time than any other method. It is the use of droppers. You will learn more about fly selection through using droppers for one year than you can learn in any other way. I give a description of how to rig a good dropper leader in the clamworm article that is archived on this web site. Spring fishing can be maddening when the fish are rising all around you, sometimes closer than your rod tip and you can not interest a single one. It happens often and once you have cracked the code once, you will look forward to cracking it again. When there are three sizes of silversides in a river tie three sizes of silverside flies on your droppers. Tie the smallest one as the head fly #1, the medium fly as #2, and the longest as the tail fly #3. If the bass are selectively feeding on any of the three sizes they will tell you quickly which one. If you continue to catch fish and then they stop taking your fly but continue to rise, change one of the flies to another pattern. Change the head fly to a shrimp or clamworm fly and see what happens. I often fish with a clam worm, a shrimp, and a silverside fly. It is a high percentage approach when fishing in the spring and it is very effective in most situations. I also fish with three clamworm flies of different sizes and colors and I am always trying new configurations. I sometimes fish with a Razzle-Dazzle, a Ray's fly and a R.A.T. hairwing salmon fly. There is no end to the variations you can use and it is surprising sometimes to catch three fish at once when you can not catch any at all if you fish the same flies singly. Spring fishing is upon us. Good luck.
Ken.

© 2001